There are a few things I don’t understand about these rabid climate change sceptics that are tearing apart the Liberal party at the moment.

1. Why the Earth is Flat

Forget the science, forget the sceptics, forget the climate change evangelists, forget the climate cliques, cables and secret societies. The whole debate boils down to a very simple idea.

Remember 20 years ago when there were people around who were still a little sceptical about the dangers of smoking. Back then I would say to smokers, “Breathing in smoke is never going to be good for you.” All the science of the anti-smoking lobby did is prove what any person with half a brain could have figured out for themselves.

The climate change debate is exactly the same. Is cutting down half the Earth’s rainforest going to be good for the environment or bad? Is paving over a surprisingly large percentage of the Earth’s surface going to be good or bad? Digging up coal and sucking oil out of the ground and burning it is going to affect the environment, no?

There is such a thing as natural climate change, but to suggest that humans do not have any meaningful impact? Well you better start smoking because cigarettes do not cause cancer. You haven’t seen proof that the earth is round, better start believing it is flat – just to be safe.

2. Who’s your sceptic?

It continues to amaze me the impact that green house sceptics have. It seems to me that most of them are geologists who at one time or other worked for the coal or oil industry. Scientists are sceptical by nature; they have to be as they are continually having to come up with new ways of testing each other’s theories.

A theory is only valid if it can stand up to testing and experiment. In this scientific world it is very difficult if not impossible for a lie or mistake to go undetected for long. It is only after a theory has been tested by multiple individual scientists and universities that anybody outside that world ever hears of it.

The theory of man-made global warming has undergone more testing than any other theory you can think of. It is different from many other theories in that it is difficult to perform experiments on, as we don’t have more than one Earth. Instead scientists use increasingly detailed simulations. They are also able to find ways of looking into the Earth’s past, such as analysing gases trapped in Antarctic ice for thousands of years.

The average person isn’t going to understand the intricate detail of the science. We are not scientists, but we can come up with thought experiments like mine above to figure it out. We can also choose to believe science. You believe in science every day when you drive your car or use your computer. Science is more than a group of nerdy men and women, it is a system that has given us amazing things. In this world it is really the only thing we can trust.

What these liberal rebels don’t understand, is that if you don’t know you should defer to an expert, preferably an expert whose work has been backed up by other experts.

3. It All Comes Down To Warcraft

I think that the many Australian politicians who are sceptical of climate change believe that it doesn’t really matter if they are wrong, because Australia only releases 1% of the world’s greenhouse gases. This assertion appears correct when you first look at it, but under analysis it is quickly proved false. Consider this example:

A few years ago my brother and I were playing World of Warcraft. WoW was all about killing monsters. Some monsters are so big they require cooperation to beat them. For the biggest monsters 40 players would need to gather together and form a raid group. Every player would need to do as much damage as magically possible to bring down the boss.

One day my guild was completing the dungeon Molten Core. We had one more monster to kill his name was Ragnaros. We were all there ready to kill the monster, but one guy’s mum wants him to go walk the dog – now or else. So 39 of us start killing the monster and we are succeeding. We get him down to 50% health and after a bit longer 9%. At this stage people start dying and the amount of damage that the group can deal plunges down. The numbers tick down slower and slower. Finally we get to 1% and the last one of us dies.

What this example shows us is that: everybody needs to do their bit. If every other country that only releases 1% emissions also decided to do nothing – that really would matter.

4. Did John Howard Complain?

I don’t understand how the Liberal rebels are unable to follow what the majority of their party has decided. I’m not sure if they fully respect democratic tradition. The majority decide on a course of action and those in the minority have to respect it -without resorting to drastic measures. When John Howard was in charge there was no way in hell that this would have been allowed to happen. When Howard lost his seat he respected what his electorate had decided and he never complained.

The rebels are also going against what the majority of Australians want. They seem to think they know better. Or they are playing some strange political game that involves tearing apart the party they were elected to represent.

RIP Liberal party

I am not the biggest fan of the Liberal party, but I will feel sad if it does die. Australians don’t like it when political parties are unable to contain internal disagreement – look at the Democrats.

One of the things that makes Australia such a good place would have to be its political stability. I believe the two-party system plays a big part in this even if it pisses us off sometimes. One thing I am just itching to see is the polls – although it isn’t difficult to predict which way the Liberal party will have gone.

Maybe a new party will form led by Tony Abbott. It doesn’t take a climate change scientist to figure out what that party should be called…

Even though I have been blogging for almost 7 years now I still find it difficult to find good new blogs to read. I don’t have a blogging sixth sense that allows me to feel a ripple in the force when a good blog is near.

Over the last few months my brother and I have been working on a website called Log My Blog. The idea of the website is for people to find a good blog fast. Users are able to add blogs to the site and review them. The blogs are given a rating out of 10 allowing the best blogs to bubble to the top.

Users are also able to subscribe to a blog’s RSS feed directly from our website. RSS feeds are often difficult to find on blogs, but every blog, besides a rare few, has one. For those people that only view blogs through RSS this is a great feature.

Log My Blog will drive traffic to good blogs and give new people an access point to the sometimes confusing world of the blogosphere.

There are many blogging directories out there, but only a few make an effort to sort the directory into any kind of order. Most are simple lists that are rarely updated making finding a blog a hit and miss affair. Others give you the Google Page Rank or the popularity of a blog as a guide to how good the blog is, but as any frustrated author will tell you – popular does not necessarily mean good.

Log My Blog separates blogs into many different categories. A blog is often in more than one category. Each blog is given a blog rank, which is the average of all the ratings left by reviewers. Users are able to easily sort the list of blogs by, blog rank, popularity, A to Z, Z to A and most reviewed. The list can also be sorted by Post Frequency and whether or not the blog allows comments.

Log My Blog will make money through advertising. The ads will be non-obtrusive, placed in positions that do not irritate the user or interfere with the normal operation of the website or the browser used to view the website. I know how frustrating it can be on a website like wired.com that is constantly having those stupid ads drifting across the screen.

Log My Blog will have its own blog continually updated by my brother and I. I will be shifting the majority of my blogging from my old blog ChrisFryer.com to the Log My Blog Blog. This blog will be the place to report bugs or tell me about things you like or dislike. If you do not wish your blog to be on the website you can also tell me that here.

The most important part of Log My Blog is of course the users. We will try our hardest to make log my blog a fun and useful website. With your support I am sure we will be a success.

Over the past few days I have been reading a great book: Galileo’s Dream by Kim Stanley Robinson.

I have read quite a few books by Kim Stanley Robinson. Most people would know him by the Mars trilogy, Red, Green and Blue Mars. The books had amazing characters and ideas, but there were way too many words and I found them a bit boring. Icehenge and the Gold Coast suffered from similar problems. But Galileo’s Dream sucked me in from the first page.

Galileo’s dream is from an unnamed sub-genre of science fiction pioneered by the likes of Matthew Reilly (Contest: a group of many different alien races fighting to the death in New York City library) and Harry Turtledove (Worldwar Tetralogy: aliens invade in the middle of World War II). It is when an author thinks of an idea that sounds ridiculous and then makes an honest attempt to write the book.

In Galileo’s dream the world’s first scientist Galileo is visited by a mysterious stranger who transports him to an extraordinary future and then back to his own time. The book avoids paradoxes in a uniquely plausible fashion. Time travel has not been done better in fiction, although Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban comes close.

The best part of the book is the Galileo character himself. He is so real that you would swear that Kim Stanley Robinson has his own method of time travel. Robinson doesn’t shy away from showing the unsavoury side of Galileo.

The book provides an interesting and detailed insight into the historical context of Galileo’s conflict with the Catholic Church and his enemies.

From many perspectives this is a great book to read and I strongly advise you do.

I was forced to change browsers today and I am very angry. For many years I was a Mozilla man although it was known as Netscape then. Using dishonest means, such as not respecting standards splitting the Internet in two, Microsoft defeated Netscape and I was forced to become, much to my shame, an Explorer user.

Over the following years there was a continual battle between Internet Explorer and the other browsers, such as Firefox, Opera and Chrome. For much of that time the other browsers were better, but every now and then Internet Explorer would go back to the top – in my opinion anyway.

Earlier this month I got a new computer, a real beast running Windows 7. I downloaded Internet Explorer 8 and it has been crashing several times a day since I installed it. This morning I was trying to show somebody something on Google images and the browser crashed every time I tried to expand a picture. It was the last straw. Fuck Microsoft, fuck Bill Gates (although I do respect the fact that he does give a lot to charity) and fuck Internet Explorer.

Firefox is now my browser of choice – do not disappoint me.

I received an amusing spam e-mail yesterday fishing for me to buy extra domain names. I actually got sucked into it at first, but I soon realised that it was a scam. I thought it would be an amusing exercise to reply to it at face value.

Here is the e-mail:

To whom it may concern: 2009-11-19

We are a domain name registration service company in Asia,

Last week we received a formal application submited by Peter Lee who wanted to use the keyword “CHRISFRYER” to register the Internet Brand and with suffix such as .cn /.com.cn /.net.cn/.hk/ .asia/ domain names.

After our initial examination, we found that these domain names to be applied for registration are same as your domain name and trademark. If you think that these domain names to be regisrated would produce possible dispute with you or effect your current businesss, you would contact us as soon as possible by Fax,Telephone or Email to protect and register related domains names , otherwise we have to approve his regisration application without your any reply in the next 5 working days.

Yours sincerely
Sunny

Checking Department

Sunny is in desperate need of a dictionary. Not only can’t he spell registration, I don’t think he understands the meaning of sincerely. I particularly liked the fictitious Mr Lee though. Here is my reply:

Hi Sunny,

Mr Lee can register as many Chris Fryer domain names as he wants to as long as he is aware that ChrisFryer.com belongs to me and if he wants it he will need to pay me extremely well.

I also *will not* buy other Chris Fryer domain names either now or into the future.

Thank you very much and give Mr Lee my best wishes,

Yours sincerely,
Chris Fryer

All jokes aside, this is a serious attempt to con me out of hundreds of dollars. These e-mail scams are becoming increasingly sophisticated.

Generally it can be safely assumed that any e-mail from a company you have never heard of or from a financial institution is an e-mail scam. A reputable bank will never send you an e-mail. If you’re unsure about an e-mail the safe thing to do is to delete it.

A rather brutal battle has recently erupted in the long-running blog war between the crikey Bloggs and Andrew Bolt.

I Love a good blog war particularly when they get nasty. Andrew Bolt like most loony right-wingers has a particularly thin-skin when it comes to anyone questioning his crazy theories.

The current battle started with Andrew Bolt’s November 17 post “ABC hires the man who bashed Howard with a stick” in which he whingers bitterly about the appointment of crikey editor Jonathan Green to ABCs online opinion section. His whining has got to be seen to be believed. He goes on to complain about crikey writers and commenters who have victimised him. One of his most amusing complaints was how one of the writers of crikey urged that bolt be “sodomised with a calculator”.

Crikey politics writer Possum Comitatus fired the second salvo and scored a direct hit with an hysterically funny article “Peak Wingnut” which will simply serve to stir Bolt up further. It was a champagne moment and will go down in blogging folklore. You must read this article.

A third salvo was fired by fellow crikey writer Tobias Ziegler who “cleared up a few things” highlighting the hypocrisy of Andrew Bolt’s arguments another direct hit was scored. Whilst not as funny as Possums perfectly executed victimisation is equally satisfying and definitely worth a read.

I will be following this war closely and am eagerly waiting for the next engagement.

I have become increasingly frustrated over the past few weeks as my Internet keeps cutting out. I have Big Pond cable broadband with a Motorola SBG 900 modem – one of those black surfboard type modems. Our SBG is completely fucked you cannot even log onto it sometimes. All the lights are meant to be solid, but instead they blink crazily.

Anyway I ordered a new modem. It was supposed to arrive on Friday, Tuesday at the latest. It is Tuesday and the fucking thing hasn’t arrived. It bloody better arrive Wednesday.

Over the past few days I have been trying to integrate my new blog with twitter. I also plan on shifting my blogging activities from ChrisFryer.com to Log My Blog.

The main problem with me twitterising my blog is that I don’t really understand twitter.

I had a number of questions about twitter that I couldn’t answer no matter how hard I tried searching for one on Google or Wikipedia. Nevertheless, I have managed to answer them.

Q: What is the point of twitter?
A: I guess it is another method of communication designed to make money for somebody without the users being aware of it. Some people have called a social networking site, kind of like Facebook without the book.

Q: Can you reply to your own tweet?
A: Seemingly not, but why not? It seems kind of strange that you cannot reply to your own tweet, after all in e-mail and text messages you can. It is probably a method of cutting down on spam.

Q: What is a retweet and how do you do it?
A: Contrary to popular opinion, a retweet is not a hotel for birds. It is when you re-post another person’s tweet on your own account, usually with the prefix RT, this is usually followed by a @ followed by the username of the person you are retweeting. This ends up looking like: twitter_user_1 RT @twitter_user_2 twitter sucks balls!

Q: How does a blog post know when someone is tweeting about it?
A: Usually (on a WordPress blog anyway) an easily installed plug-in takes care of finding the tweets for a particular blog post. Unless I was to interview a plug-in programmer or reverse engineer the plug-in myself I can’t answer this question. I would really love someone to answer this question for me in the comments.

Does anybody have twitter frustrations? I am looking forward to your questions and answers in the comments.

David Marr is good on media watch but he really gives me the shits. Everything he says sounds rehearsed and he can’t help being condescending.

I do find him irritating, but he said a few things about the refugee crisis on last night’s Q&A that set me thinking. He said that Kevin Rudd is being way too weak with the opposition and the Australian public.

It is no surprise to anyone that a large portion of Australians seem to fear refugees. Kevin Rudd needs to tell us that there is no real crisis and that our fear is unjustified or something along those lines. Maybe he could also compare our refugee intake with that of other countries. He should underline the problems with the Pacific solution on the grounds of expense, practicality and the unfair treatment of asylum seekers.

David Marr also criticised Indonesia’s appalling handling of the asylum seekers on board the Oceanic Viking. The Indonesian government won’t accept the asylum seekers if force is used to remove them from the Oceanic Viking.

The thing is on any commercial vessel after rescuing asylum seekers the captain would go to the nearest port and drop the rescued people off, if they were belligerent force would be used. If force cannot be used in this situation and a ship is found in distress the captain has a very difficult decision to make. Being stuck in port with one hundred asylum seekers on a ship not designed to carry passengers and your cargo rotting away. It would be a lot easier and no doubt better for the career to sail on past. After all there are plenty of other ships out there one of them is bound to stop.

Kevin Rudd has been sucked into this asylum seeker crisis and really it isn’t his fault. Instead of just being carried along by it he should stand up and fight back.

It seems the asylum seeker issue is now firmly back in the political arena. With the sudden dip in opinion polls that have no doubt gone down because the Oceanic Viking saga it is still a hot topic for the electorate.

I think it was extremely unfair of Tony Abbott to blame the sinking of a vessel and the probable deaths of 11 asylum seekers off the Cocos Islands solely on the shoulders of the Prime Minister. Tony Abbott says the dismantling of the Pacific solution and abolition of the Temporary Protection Visa is directly to blame for this incident.

There were many things wrong with the Pacific solution. Asylum seekers were taken against their will to Pacific Islands and kept in inhumane conditions at enormous cost to the taxpayer. Most of the people kept in detention on these islands ended up in Australia anyway.

The Pacific solution was about the ends justifying the means. There are just some things that a civilised country shouldn’t do no matter what. To treat people inhumanely on the chance that people will mysteriously stop arriving in boats is wrong – simple as that. Despite what many liberal politicians say there is absolutely no proof that the Pacific solution did anything.

My personal opinion is that the arrival of asylum seekers by sea is directly related to the level of conflict around the world. The Tamil Tigers are defeated by the Sri Lanka, surprise surprise there is a sudden influx of Tamil refugees. The rest of the world needs to stop feeling sorry for Sri Lanka and use the strongest diplomacy to stop the persecution of Tamil civilians.

It is not like we are drowning in asylum seekers, we don’t get tens of thousands a year like some European countries or the United States. I also don’t believe a change to our refugee policy is needed as it would probably be a pointless waste of money.